AT&T Won't Give Up On Mobile TV, Now Wants To Sell You $1300 Gear To Watch Cartoons In Your Car

from the that's-a-lot-for-some-cartoons dept

Despite a ton of hype from its backers over the years, there's been very little interest in mobile TV services -- especially with the current subscription-based model. AT&T launched its mobile TV offering using Qualcomm's MediaFLO service last year, and given the lack of news about it, it doesn't seem to have set the world on fire. But AT&T doesn't seem to have learned too much from that experience and adapted its business model to a new satellite-based mobile TV offering that's made for in-car use, preferring instead to trod the same path with a sizable monthly service fee and expensive equipment. For just $1299 for the equipment (not including professional installation) and $28 per month, its CruiseCast service will deliver customers 22 channels of TV and 20 audio channels. Even if these weren't trying economic times, the pricing seems pretty prohibitive, and it's hard to imagine this service will find much more success than other similar efforts. Further, it's really difficult to see a future for any sort of mobile TV service that's built around the subscription model, especially when it tries to force customers back into linear programming schedules, and give up the control that their DVRs and other on-demand technologies offer.

There is definitely a market for this stuff. Around where I live, the DirectTV box from TracVision is becoming a pretty common sight. It is expensive, but works quite well. With more competition in this market, prices will come down.

The AT&T offer isn't actually not all that expensive, relatively speaking. Go to a car dealership and check out the prices on factory installed dvd players. They are often $2000+ options.

Also, why would you assume that DVR's and on-demand services aren't coming? I would assume they are.

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Because we all know that putting TV shows on your phone or iPod/portable media player is just so fricken hard.

it's not hard to do, but if you do it the easy way it's most likely illegal. changing from one format to another often involves stripping the original formats protections which is a big no-no according to hollywood.

i think AT&T won't give up because mobile TV is big in europe and asia where lots of people take public transit.

the trouble with mobile anything in the US is that everyone drives and if you so much as think about touching a mobile phone within 100 feet of a moving vehicle then chances are you are breaking some sort of law.

so, mobile TV/movies/whatever is pretty easy to do and comes in super handy in a bunch of situations, as long as you don't mind breaking the law.

Agreed. Little doubt that this too will prove a failure. The question then is whether there is any mobile TV model that will provide customers what they want - I say mobile in the sense that you can access new content while on the move, not the ability, noted above, to transfer content to a mobile device. A compelling mobile video experience requires three things - decent quality (close to what you can get now via an iTunes download), ability to access content on-demand, and a large amount of available quality programming (i.e., not just two minute throw-away add-ons from the Office).

I have real doubts that today's current wireless technology can supply all three - at least enough to make it appealing to the masses. Video quality via 3G is fine, but nothing compared to an iTunes download. Video quality is better via Media FLO, but that lacks good on demand capability and it's too expensive. Broadcasters will be offering free mobile TV soon (with better quality), but will the old school linear broadcasting model work in the mobile TV environment?

I think all of these companies have grossly overestimated the desire for a mobile TV, and lots of companies like AT&T are going to lose millions because of that pie-in-the-sky thinking.

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God, who knew that iTunes and Amazon's Unbox are illegal?

and those files will tansfer to and play on your phone as is? perhaps if you have an iphone and only buy from itunes, but for the rest of us, converting a file to avi, wmv, or mpg is likely to be a DMCA violation.

it doesn't stop me from doing it, but it's likely stop your mom and dad (the people who pay for downloads in the first place) from doing so.

Good Idea, Wrong Approach

You don't actually need much in the way of special equipment for this; I have personally witnessed several truckers propping a regular satellite dish -the little ones Sky use in this country- against their vehicle so they can watch television in the cab, and I once saw one bolted to the roof of an RV. With a lightweight omni-directional antenna and a decoder box that could run off a 12v supply I don't suppose it'd be hard to pick up a signal on the move and pipe it to an in-car entertainment screen. Hell, the way Sky satellite works it wouldn't even cost extra; their viewing cards can be swapped freely between decoder boxes.

If you can get a portable DVD player for less than $80 bucks, how much of the market will pay for the in-car AT&T setup. Some, I'm sure, but not much.

Now consider that there is increasing competition from devices people already have, smartphones, media players, PSPs, etc. That saps the demand for expensive in-car systems, and certainly expensive subscriptions.

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As far as I can tell, I don't use the service, Unbox videos can play on all portable PlaysForSure devices such as my Zen. But I was wrong, apparently, because you cannot transfer such files to phones. At least, I could not find a PlaysForSure phone. Amazon is missing a huge opportunity here.

cheap satellite bandwidth?

The carpocalypse looms

Do people pay for these when the screen is only in the backseat? That seems like a steep price. Although I'd be a sad panda if the put the screens in the front seat because then some jackass would probably just rear end me on the interstate every couple miles. A screen in the front seat would be good for when the car is parked. Include satellite internet access with wifi and then there just might be enough value to justify a tv subscription for my car.

Re: The carpocalypse looms

Well, actually it is illegal in most states to have a screen in the front seat on while driving. The players are supposed to have a safety feature that ties to the cars parking break so that you have to have the parking break on in order to have the player play video (in the front). Headunits that play video have separate outputs for rear monitors and the video playback associated with the in-dash unit has the parking break safety feature. A lot of people simply bypass it or simply add an external monitor and plug it to one of the rear outputs in order to trick the unit into thinking that the screen is not in view of the driver. If installed correctly though the units are built to be safe and would prevent people from watching TV and driving which is a no no, but due to lack of common sense, I'm sure someone will think it is cool and they will do it anyway until it becomes a big enough problem that they will be forced to pass a federal law concerning it when there really is no need.

I think some laws need to be reviewed and removed since it is not natural to have people that are too stupid to use common sense survive for so long....natural selection seems to be a thing of the past unfortunately since we feel the need to "protect" those that can not think intelligently for themselves.

You should know that AT&T Mobile TV, aka MediaFLO, is on two AT&T handsets (might be up to 4 by now), and is $15.99 per month with 12 channels of linear programming. By contrast, these guys also offer MobiTV for $9.99 per month with over 40 channels. I watch live ESPN Sunday Night Baseball on it, full episodes of the Office and a ridiculous amount of music videos. AT&T announced that it was their top-selling application recently. I agree that the subscription model by itself is probably not sustainable over the long haul, but why do the problems of MediaFLO get all the attention when its obvious that people are buying & using MobiTV?

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"why do the problems of MediaFLO get all the attention when its obvious that people are buying & using MobiTV?"

Because MobiTV has been around for about 7 years, and their growth stagnated years ago, as they had a limited number of people willing to pay the monthly nut, plus more for premium channels.

Also, as linear TV programming, MobiTV does not offer personalized viewing schedules. Yet as a unicast technology, it consumes as much bandwidth as expected by sending an individual stream to each phone. Worst of both worlds!

OK, so now I've given some attention to the problems of MobiTV, too. Happy?

Services like MobiTV may eventually prosper, however, as 3.5G and 4G technologies might have adequate capacity to make then economically feasible (charge lower prices, grow the market).